The Dove and the Crow
by NickeltheRed
Summary: Every full moon, they meet at Ciel's grave. Is this a sin though, when Heaven is forever watching? Sebastian/Elizabeth dark oneshot.


**I own nothing of course. All rights to go Yana.**

* * *

Maidens usually wait in meadows for the ones they love, or at best, they wait in a little summer garden while they busy themselves with humming songs of adoration and weaving flowers into their beautiful hair. They wait for the prince who will come riding in on a tall white horse, and hopefully they'll have no more worries as they vanish together in the light of the dying sun.

Well, Elizabeth is waiting too.

But she's not in a meadow, nor her family's back garden. She waits here, in the darkened cemetery, alight by the full moon above.

She thinks it's more fitting for them. It's where the crows like to gather.

 **.o0o.**

 _It was her favorite day of the week. It was just her and Edward alone at home that day and they lulled around in the family's library, enjoying the warmth, bathing in sunlight and books._

 _"All black, always black. Everything, his hair, his clothes..." her brother criticized. "He looks like a tall, talking raven if you ask me."_

 _"I'd say Sebastian's all crow," she debated, scrawling down a passage she wanted to memorize._

 _Edward glanced up from his novel once more, brow arched. "Raven...crow...what's the difference?"_

 _"There's a big difference," she said confidently. "Sebastian's not Divine enough to be a raven. Ravens are dignified companions to ancient gods and a metaphor for the Angel of Death. That's not him. Crows, however, cannot abide silence for long and they are prone to stealing things...even from their neighbors' own nests. Everything's a game to them and they enjoy playing tricks. Think about it, crows are known to be parasites of today's society."_

 _"Hm. True."_

 **.o0o.**

Upon night of every full moon following, she returns to this spot to bestow three white roses onto youngest Phantomhive's gravestone.

And—the truth is—she's not waiting to see her husband's ghost as so many people in London have come to believe.

 _"You do whatever you want, my dove, and whenever you want it..."_ Her father says this a great deal lately, to reassure her that grieving does take its time to settle and no one in town should ever insist that she has gone utterly mad for grieving in her own way, especially if it's the one thing that's bound to help her move on.

Is it a sin though, to do whatever she wants, and however she wants to do it when Heaven is forever watching, keeping score of who's worthy and whose not?

She certainly must look odd, surreal, here amongst the graves when having pure green eyes that are said to glisten like jewels and fair yellow curls that spill around her neck, and wearing this white nightdress trimmed with blue satin at the hem. She is a fragile day bird sitting in a crow's nest...a porcelain doll misplaced in a dark and dank location.

And yet, such outer looks as this can very deceiving.

For Elizabeth Middleford Phantomhive—the light of her father's life, the pride and joy of her mother, and the elegant little sister of Edward who attends all of the political balls in perfect style—comes here to meet another man by moonlight.

See, the real problem is, she has started to say things that normal proper maidens should never speak of. She's started to feel another sentiment besides her grieving. And although it feels good...she's sure that's really bad.

Elizabeth knows he's here now. Somewhere.

She doesn't stand. She just remains kneeling there staring at Ciel's grave, unmoving, silent, and waits a bit longer.

He's towering over her from behind moments later, but he doesn't say anything either right away. He doesn't have to.

 _Is this a sin, when Heaven is forever watching?_ She aches to ask him this, but, those words usually get caught in her throat and she swallows them down to save them for another time.

She's still somewhat cautious of him. She guesses...she assumes what could have happened to Ciel.

The rest of London ruled it as a suicide.

Elizabeth has her reasons to believe otherwise.

"...You should get home, Elizabeth."

"I know."

The stars overhead are fading, true, but it's the memories that still linger.

 **.o0o.**

 _"If it wasn't you...I'm afraid it could've been me. That is...if I had to."_

 _Sebastian gave her a dry look._

 _"After all, it's always the butler...," she recited with a mournful smile tugging at her lips, "...or the wife."_

 **.o0o.**

This present full moon looks different. It glows with a striking reddish color.

"You once asked me if I hoped to have children one day," she suddenly reminds him.

"What of it?"

"Well, I decided. I don't think children would have solved anything."

That delicate hand of hers slips comfortably down his sleeve to clutch his own and he doesn't object. He always seems to allow this (the touching and the pulling) whenever she slowly guides him along behind her, simply because she wants to. Then she may sidestep around the next row of headstones, with him parallel to her on the other side, and they hold their arms up all the way down the row, as if they're children playing a game and making bridges out of their limbs.

Thunder rolls in the distance, but she's not concerned about rain.

Once the headstones vanish between them and Elizabeth's body naturally sways closer to him again. She leans in fully...her mouth softly touching the corner of his mouth.

 **.o0o.**

This time around, he sees the blue finger-shaped bruises imprinted around the curve her of wrist before she even has to mention that the culprit was a man. A man drowning in wine, who had taken her for a street whore just recently—he thought she was a courtesan, more specifically—considering how looked in her classy black dress walking home at such a late hour.

Needless to say, there had been a struggle.

And three after that night's meeting, Elizabeth reads a certain headline on the front page of father's newsletter, one regarding a mysterious death of a drunken man. He is...or _was_ the owner of two brothels and his corpse has just been found sprawled along the pavement leading up to the cemetery, with one broken arm, a series of scratch marks lining his chest and his skull was evidently bashed in against the stone wall.

Elizabeth's not dull. She recognizes the man's photograph well enough and figures that it was no _accident,_ but she says nothing.

 **.o0o.**

Elizabeth slowly sweeps her hand through the grass, taking in the feel of it between her fingers before she pushes herself upwards, drawing her corset back to her naked chest.

He's still lays there beside her, on his back, muscles flexed, resting on the nest of shed clothing they've made on the slope of the hill.

Her head turns towards him, yellow curls undone and disheveled sway over the pale curve of her shoulder. "Why didn't you stop me?"

He notes how she doesn't sound offended, or hurt, just curious. He scoffs lightly. "You didn't want me to."

 **.o0o.**

Their full moon waxes into positon high over the clouds.

And Elizabeth does not go to the cemetery. Instead, her mother insists on snatching her and setting her down to have a pot of tea with her.

Like two civilized, knowledgeable woman, they talk about the lack of spouses and grandchildren.

 **.o0o.**

He is the one who has done all the waiting tonight and he rounds a corner of the Gothic tomb, appearing to her quickly and smoothly as a black bird flitting out of the shadows.

"You didn't come last month." The words, surprisingly, almost come out as an insult. And there's also a new rigidness to his usual fluid posture.

The Crow stares down the Dove. _How dare you. Who do you think I am?_

She offers him a small apologetic smile. "I just wanted to see if you'd notice."

"Really? There's not anything else?"

She sighs through her teeth, her eyes harden to steel. The Dove does not flee the Crow just to give him the pleasure of knowing he can chase her off. "It's Count Alexander H. A. Silas."

"New friend of yours?"

"New betrothed, actually," she states, "They've already agreed on the arrangements. I am to meet with him tomorrow."

"They settled on that without your consent?"

"No. It's just...how things work, Sebastian, you should know that. And I...can understand why they thought it'd be better for me to have a live husband than to be uncared for at all."

She's just adding a second husband to the picture. No need to fret about it. Things won't be so different than they were were with Ciel. Right?

Would she rather live her the rest of her life alone? ...Surely not.

"Refuse him."

"Why?" she snaps back.

"Because I was getting close," he replies to her, though it sounds more like he's answering himself. "I was so close. You were almost mine."

She bites her lip. She knows.

With no Ciel to serve and no Ciel to control him, Sebastian's gone feral; scrounging, possessive, straining to stay tethered to this world for as long as he can, and he's out on the hunt again.

"Sebastian...I will _not_ be chosen by you. If I want it, then I will choose to be with _you_."

 **.o0o.**

He actually manages to startle her when he steps on a loose tree branch, and the snapping noise cuts the silence. Elizabeth looks up from Ceil's grave, turns, sees him, then backs away three paces from him on sheer instinct. His breathing is rugged and it has a strange monstrous echo to it, like it's flowing and rippling all around her from all directions. His eyes gleam bright red and they pierce right through the dark.

As he narrows in, his...claws are soon grazing across her cheek, then her neck, and she feels the warm, _wet_ , iron substance painting her skin. He smells like a fresh slaughter. And Alexander's silver brooch, the one that has his family crest engraved on it, falls from his grip and it taps against her foot when it reaches the ground.

 _"I want your soul...,"_ he says, before it turns into a hissing snarl. _"...only me...precious dove."_

The Dove shudders in the Crow's clutches, but she doesn't run, she doesn't flutter off. She gazes up at him through her lashes.

Perhaps she wouldn't be getting married again after all.


End file.
